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Reeves Beach – 90 Mile Beach – Gippsland

or In full Nancy Drew mode, Kris uncovered a delightful free camp along 90 mile beach in Wikicamps. I guess being such a long beach, they had to break it down into smaller chunks of similar sandiness. Ours was called Reeves Beach, a mere 112 km from our last camp at Yanakie. The distances between camps have reduced significantly now that we’re in the final stretch of the trip with a bit of time to kill, meaning that we no longer have any large distances to devour and sadly, we could be home in one very long days drive.

Looking southwest along 90 mile beach, on a good day…

One bit of excitement was a flat battery at Yarram, the last town before our camp. One thing we have to manage are longish stops with the caravan hooked up. The Cruisers two batteries are huge, but are getting very tired after almost 35,000 kilometres and countless corrugations. They have to run the enormous caravan fridge and the car fridge unless we switch the van over the gas. Long story short; the car wouldn’t start so I called NRMA, who directed the call to RACV, who were there in under 5 minutes! We hadn’t even finished making lunch. Tim, our friendly RACV technician, confirmed with a battery load tester that one battery was deceased, and the second one just didn’t have the grunt to start the car. This was timely as both batteries were new when we left 330 days ago, and with just nine days of warranty left, I needed to know if lady luck was travelling with us. With the RACV confirmation of ill-health, apparently she was.

James, desperate to wash up, fights Kris for the tea towel.

The boys lost in a blissful imaginary world with their monster trucks.

Reeves Beach is a lovely little grassy camp nestled in behind a large sheltering sand dune. We spent our three days here walking along the beach and fishing. In practice this meant feeding the huge population of crabs who were growing fat on bait from luckless (or hopeless) fishermen like me. The boys spent their time playing monster trucks on the beach, playing Lego or doing the homework required to keep their stern teacher, Miss Kristen, satisfied.

I actually caught a few like this one. Desperate to eat the bait, they hang on the hook.

I decided to feed the crabs my last bit of bait on the morning we were to leave, with James agreeing to join me ‘just for a chat’. If we go fishing, it is invariably James that nails the elusive suckers. Sure enough, as I watched my line tug and release, classic signs of a crab party at the other end, James ran up the beach dragging his rod and squealing that he’d caught something. Seeing that he was about to run out of beach, I convinced him to actually reel in his catch. Sure enough, a rather large and angry crab was tangled in the line, as was a beautiful 44 cm flathead. The crab lived to fight another day, the flatty went into the fridge. Well done James.

3 thoughts on “Reeves Beach – 90 Mile Beach – Gippsland”

Julian, we spent time on 90 mile beach when attending Sarah Pile’s wedding ca 1997. There were many kite fliers, practicing for national championships. Despite warm weather the sea was very cold. Cheers, Dad